


untitled (who will survive and what will be left of them)

by Lunarwolfik



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 15:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunarwolfik/pseuds/Lunarwolfik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They called him Legend sometimes.</p><p>Other times they didn’t call him anything at all, he was just a wandering ghost passing through, sticking to the outskirts with not even a questioning whisper following in his footsteps.</p><p>One time they called him The Hunter.</p><p>Another time it’s The One which made him laugh because…well, even he still remembered the Matrix.</p><p>Whatever name he’s given though, it’s always said with awe and fear.  And it’s always followed by rushed syllables that sound like 'The Man with the Yellow Eyes' and 'going to waste him'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled (who will survive and what will be left of them)

**Author's Note:**

> AU after beginning of Season 2.

  
_we’re all waiting for the end,_  
_what kind of finish will he send?_  
_-"Masters in Reverse Psychology", Murder by Death_  


 

They called him Legend sometimes.

Other times they didn’t call him anything at all, he was just a wandering ghost passing through, sticking to the outskirts with not even a questioning whisper following in his footsteps.

One time they called him The Hunter.

Another time it’s The One which made him laugh because…well, even he still remembered the Matrix.

Whatever name he’s given though, it’s always said with awe and fear. And it’s always followed by rushed syllables that sound like _The Man with the Yellow Eyes_ and _going to waste him_.

***

“Stop whining, Winchester,” she said, smacking the young boy on the arm. He flinched, biting his lip and trying to hide the pain of getting marked for the first time. The kid was barely fifteen, young pup if she’d ever seen one, big brown doe eyes and a floppy mess of hair that kept falling into them. The boy kept pushing it back, but to no avail.

Winchesters, they kept getting younger and younger every year. 

He was clean-shaven with pale unblemished skin, with a few freckles from harvest work like everybody else. His knuckles though, they were bruised, blue and black, and he had a scrap above his elbow, all red-brown and peeling. That was good, it meant he was a scrapper. 

His sister had gotten taken a few weeks back, little thing, full of bright smiles and cheerful. The girl had always stopped by the shop to talk to her, tell her how she was going to be an Inker when she grew up, and always watched her work with round-eyed wonder. 

No one knew where the children went, except that the demons didn’t touch ‘em. No bones or blood were ever left over, just cold sheets and empty beds. One taken every few years, sometimes two or three if the town was unlucky.

“Alright, you’re all done,” she said to the boy. He sniffed and shook off his last grimace of pain from the marking. She turned the chair towards the mirror so the kid could see the dark lines whirling along his shoulder in an ancient script that no one understood. He gazed at it for few seconds before a small smile broke the surface.

“It’s-It’s beautiful,” he finally stammered out, eyes big as saucers. She grabbed a small square of gauze and taped it over the ink before anymore blood could ooze to the surface.

“Course it is, I’m only the best Inker in town boy. Now you’d better skedaddle before I get tired of looking at your floppy hair,” she threw back, wiping her hands on a towel. The boy looked momentarily hurt before she smiled and swatted him with the edge of her towel. “You can come back anytime pal. And I hope you find-“ she paused, glancing down, not wanting to bring up painful memories for the kid after finally putting the first real smile on his face in weeks.

“Just do good kid,” she finished. He nodded, the long-settled seriousness creeping back into his features as he scooted himself down from the chair, dust puffing from the ripped seam along the side. She’d kept meaning to mend that. 

She began putting away her supplies, wiping them down with the towel, the new ink and blood mixing with old worn-in stains. 

The boy took a closer look in the mirror before turning to her. “Thank you ma’am. You really are the best.” He held out his hand and it made her smile but at the same time broke her heart. He was far too young to be out hunting, he should have been enjoying his youth and playing in the fields, not practically standing at attention in her shop with a fresh tattoo on his shoulder. 

She shook his hand, the boy’s palm rough from fieldwork and loss. 

“You be careful, Winchester,” she said, unable to keep the slightest tremble from her voice for this child’s lost youth.

“Always am,” he replied before heading out of her shop.

It was the last she ever saw of him.

***

“What’s your name, Legend? The real one.”

The man’s face went still, quiet, like he was trying real hard not to think about something. The vacant eyes sharpened, green like clear church glass, and his mouth twitched, something between a frown and a grimace or maybe a smile trying to fit his face and failing. She waited coolly, hands poised above his skin, the needle dripping thick black ink onto his forearm.

He coughed, like he hadn’t spoken in ages, full-up with years of dust and road and grime.

“Dean. Dean Winchester.”

***

Sam sat on Bobby’s porch, the overhang casting lingering shadows across his face. He’d been sitting there for hours watching while Dean worked, flipping through one of Bobby’s books, jotting down notes on a crumpled yellow legalpad. Dad's journal was open to his left, the pages flapping occasionally in the wind like small birds scrawled with illegible markings.

The sun hung heavy in the sky, making the repair work tedious and numbing, making the sweat drip off of Dean, his shirt clinging to him. It felt good though, being able to focus on his car and the hot heavy presence of summer.

He leaned over the hood, examining her strewn metallic innards and not liking what he saw. She was still missing a carburetor and a lot of the piping was smashed all to hell.

"Hey Sam, hand me the-" Before Dean could finish, Sam threw the wanted screwdriver at him. It hit his arm with a soft thump, then bounced off and fell into the gullet of the Impala. Dean narrowed his eyes, both squinting and frustrated, while Sam looked back at him innocently. "Nice Sam, real nice." 

"It got to you, didn't it?" Sam threw back, smiling, before looking back at the book in his lap. Dean grumbled in response and started rummaging around in the hood, the metal’s heat stinging from its daylong bake in the sun.

"What's that?" Sam asked, one hand cupping his ear mockingly as Dean's grumbling grew louder.

"I said you're a pain in my ass," Dean replied gruffly, glaring at Sam while half his arm was buried amongst a maze of steel.

He could feel the fallen screwdriver, stuck sideways between two lines of pipe, the plastic handle slippery and just brushing his fingertips. He leaned down further, chest pressing firmly against the metal before finally managing to get a grip on the thing. With a muffled 'gotcha' he pulled upwards, wrenching it hard.

His arm scrapped against a length of something sharp as momentum carried him upwards and banging into the Impala's hood, screwdriver falling from his grasp and clanging somewhere further down.

"Dammit," he growled, rubbing the back of his head as a line of blood trickling down his arm, the cut stinging as salty sweat mingled with it.

"You okay?" Sam's concern was tempered with a deeper shade of meaning that Dean really didn't want to think about, his voice soft and inquiring and it was about the fifth damn time he'd asked that same fucking question.

"Just peachy, Sam," Dean replied, already going back to getting the stupid screwdriver loose again.

***

The daylight faded into orange and violet as Dean kept working on the Impala and Sam kept flipping through page after page, going through three leather bound books and a whole notepad. If Dean didn't know any better, he'd think his little brother was looking for something.

When night finally caught up with him, making it too dark to do anything but poke around aimlessly in the hope of hammering out a dent and maybe not damaging her interior too much, Dean called it a day. Sam had already gone back into the house hours before, saying he had enough headaches without getting one from trying to read tiny Latin text in the waning light.

Dean took one last look at his car, dusty but still gleaming and beautiful in the moonlight, before pulling open Bobby’s screen door with it's habitual creak, and heading for the kitchen. Bobby and Sam set across from each other, each digging into a meal of potatoes, Salisbury steak, and cornbread while sliding a book back and forth between them. Bobby was a good cook, all things considered, and he didn't mind feeding them when he wasn't out. Dean didn't ask where Bobby went and Bobby didn't ask how long they were planning on crashing. It worked out in the end.

Sam motioned at one of the passages and Bobby nodded, swallowing quickly to add, "You also need some bloodroot and calypso if you want to keep it on a specific object or place permanently." Sam ‘hmmed’ in response and flipped to the next page, a picture of a devil's trap standing out in bold lines and empty spaces. 

"Am I missing something?" Dean asked, going to the counter and picking up a plate, grabbing some of the cooling food. He took the chair between them, giving the book a cursory glance before taking a bite of the lumpy potatoes.

"Not really," Sam shrugged. "There's a way to make it so that we can have a devil's trap on the whole car permanently. Thought it might come in handy, but the ingredients are pretty hard to come by." 

"And there's a blood ritual," Bobby added, pointing at a line on the opposite page, where the words _sanguio_ and _cruor_ repeated several times.

"Didn't have to do that before," Dean said around a mouthful of food, having never really been a fan of table manners.

"Magic's complicated. Stronger spells need stronger ties and stronger compensations. You're calling on old world protection, it's gonna take more than some pretty words and good intentions."

Dean didn't respond and a short silence followed, the clink of forks on plates the only sound breaking it.

"But we could do it. It'd work if we got everything?" Sam finally asked, eyes bright and hopeful.

"Sure, don't see why not,” Bobby replied with a shrug.

***

That night, Dean laid on what he'd been calling the Bed From Hell for the past few weeks, staring at the ceiling and feeling his muscles ache. The scratch on his arm throbbed in time to his heartbeat, deeper than he thought and probably going to scar. The fan overhead clacked in a dull rhythm, counterpoint to his breathing and only just managing to stir the air above him but not really doing anything to fix the stifling heat.

The floorboards moaned quietly and Dean looked up to see Sam silhouetted in the doorway. "Hey," Sam said, voice low and questioning. He paused, hesitating and indecisive before padding into the room. "Couldn't sleep." Dean blinked, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. 

"Yeah, I noticed that," Dean replied, shifting over to lean back against the headboard. Sam clamored in beside him, one leg hanging half off and their shoulders bumping. "You need me to get you a Thundercats nightlight again, Sammy?"

Sam laughed, the sound oddly muted and not quite jovial.

A moment passed and then Sam took in a shaky breath. "I found something in Dad's journal, Dean."

Dean stiffened, jaw clenching. "What?"

Sam looked down at his hands, fiddling with a loose string on the bedspread and clearing his throat. "He wrote it in code. Well, more code than usual. He…it talks about a _boca del inferno_ , there's one near Lawrence. It-it says how to open it, how to make a gateway." Sam paused to glance at Dean, hands stilling. Dean stared back, feeling like the world might be falling away right in front of him. "It says that's the way to the demon. The way to where the demon came from. And that you can kill it on the other side of the door."

Sam swallowed, voice wavering, and added quietly, so quietly Dean was almost certain he didn't actually hear it, "It says there has to be a person connected by blood on both sides to open it." 

Dean’s vision darkened, the world getting very small as he felt anger roil in his stomach. He focused on breathing, his chest constricting tightly, the words _watch out for Sammy_ and _I have a plan_ echoing in his head.

"Dad couldn't use it. But we can."

"What?" Sam asked, incredulous and confused, eyes catching moonlight and looking lost.

"He's on the other side of it, he has to be. He made a deal with that evil son of a bitch to keep me alive and-"

"No, he didn't Dean, you don't know that."

"Come on Sam, I make a full recovery and then two minutes later Dad's dead and the Colt's gone. He said he had a plan-" Dean broke off, a harsh bark of laughter bubbling up from somewhere, painful and catching and edging towards crazy.

"Dean-"

"He _told me_." And Dean was this close to jumping up and pacing before Sam stopped him with a hand on his arm, warm and pressing, stilling his racing heart. Dean clenched his fists. "He said that it was going to be okay, that he had to do it. That it was the only way to kill the demon now. Two birds, one stone." 

Long minutes passed, the dark creeping away from them, moonlight filtering weakly through crooked blinds and landing in lazy patterns across their legs. Finally Sam said, half to himself, "We're going to need a binding spell then."

***

They left Bobby's a few days later, but not before Sam had picked through all of his books and borrowed a few. Bobby was glad to give them, his house cluttered enough and figuring they'd need all the protections they could get.

The demon was still looking for them.

***

It took them a week to finally find anything useful.

"Sam, there's nothing in here," Dean said, slamming the book shut and tossing it over with all the other useless ones beside him, bed dipping from the weight as the pile grew taller and taller beside him.

"Keep looking," Sam replied automatically, not looking up from the book cradled in his lap. The table in front of Sam was covered with miscellaneous scraps of spells and incantations written on various pieces of motel stationary spread out amongst neatly highlighted printouts and photocopies, Dad's journal sitting at the center of it all like a dragon atop its horde of treasure.

"If I have to look at one more page of crazy-ass Latin, I'm going to go insane.”

"You said that an hour ago. And an hour before that," Sam said, smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"It's the slow mind numbing kind of insanity, alright."

"Uh-huh."

Dean sighed, and picked up another book, _Liber Juratus_ written neatly on the cover. He flicked it open, another page full of barely legible script meeting him. He glowered at it, wishing the thing came with a search option. Or that Google would have been more helpful.

A few minutes passed, Dean turned to the next page, humming under his breath. "Hey, I think I got something," Sam exclaimed, sitting up straighter and Dean looked up, grinning hopefully.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah.” Sam nodded firmly. “How do you feel about tattoos?"

***

It wasn't a tattoo exactly, but it was just as permanent. Dean didn't figure that one out until later.

***

They stocked up on every weapon they knew, burning blacktop across state lines, calling in every favor anybody ever owed them, and raiding one very fine gun store in Colorado. Silver bullets, consecrated iron, knives, shotguns, hell, even a sniper rifle.

Most of it was from José, the best supplier of demon killing weapons Dad knew, all of them blessed and gleaming with protective runes carved into their sides. 

"What are you packing so much heat for anyway?" he asked them curiously as they looked through his stockpile of weapons.

"It's personal, family tradition and all that," Dean replied, running a hand along a silver antique revolver carefully.

José nodded, whistling low, and handed Sam another .45. "I call this one Betsy."

***

Their last stop was an old spice sage in Oklahoma. Dad used to go see her when he needed to restock on herbs or inks or when he was facing some big nasty that had to have an asinine ritual mojo traced in something besides blood or chalk thrown at it before it could be taken down.

She was blind in one eye, milky white filming it like spidery cobwebs, and for as long as Dean could remember she'd worn the same weathered green and brown shawl draped across her shoulders. But she smiled when she opened the door, ushered them in with kind words and told them she was sorry to hear about their Daddy. Dean shrugged it off and Sam thanked her for the condolences. She started puttering around the kitchen, mixing foul smelling herbs like rosemary, thyme, and paprika with undercurrents of pumpernickel and goose liver into a boiling pot on the stove.

Reaching into the furthest cabinet, she pulled out two small vials, one full of silver liquid that caught the light while the other was pitch black, darker than night and deadly looking. Muttering incantations under her breath, she poured them into the bubbling mixture, the colors blending into deeper and deeper shades until the whole thing was a dark, menacing black.

"Boys, this is some dangerous stuff you've gotten yourself into if you're needing something like this," she said, wiping the dust off the sides of an old jar before pouring the ink inside and capping it with a cork. The glass fogged up smoky grey, obscuring the contents and a soft crackling noise started coming from it. Dean eyed the container wearily.

Sam took it, smiling, said "We'll be fine, really. Thank you," and that was that.

***

They drove to Stull straight from there, the ride tense, car full of things unsaid and Nugent playing on the radio. Dean felt tension building across his shoulders, knowing that they were close, that there was probably no coming back from this. But it was the only plan they had.

It was nearing midnight by the time they finally got there, the streets deserted, little town closed up for the night. The cemetery loomed, literally freakin' loomed, in the distance. The high arches of stone dark patches against the sky, square graves dotting lines across the horizon. They checked into Benny's “so cozy you'll think you're at home” Motel on the corner with a clear view of the abandoned church on top of the hill.

Their room was stuffy and too full, the flickering tiny lamp doing nothing but casting dim golden light that made everything soft focused and lulling. Sam put the jar of ink on the nightstand gently, then started digging through his duffel, pulling out wood handled brushes and tossed them onto the bed.

"You sure this is gonna work?" Dean asked, shucking his jacket off and rolling his shoulders. 

"Not really. But when has that ever stopped us?" Sam said, smiling, pulling out the _Grimorium Verum_ , bound in thick red leather with dark decorations, maybe flowers or some shit, curled across the cover.

Sam flipped to the marked page, yanked the yellow sticky note off the top and crumbled it. Dean took a seat on the floor in front of the bed, rolling up his sleeves and pushing his bracelet out of the way.

Sam grabbed the jar and brushes and then mirrored his position, book laying between them, the symbols bold and noticeable on the page. 

"Man, I feel like I'm at a freakin' slumber party," Dean muttered, and as soon as he said it, a cold flash of déjà vu hit him. He blinked, waiting for it to pass. Sam looked at him questioningly, but didn't comment, instead unscrewing the ink jar, letting out a fine mist. It curled around their knees, somehow sticky, leaving water droplets beading along the seams of their jeans. It kept spreading, filling the room wall to wall, roiling in serpentine coils.

"Huh, well that's different," Sam said, faintly surprised, as Dean brushed it away from his face as best he could, remembering that Will O'The Wisp in Florida and getting a bad feeling.

"You gonna paint-by-number me or just stare at the creepy ass magical fog, Sam?"

Sam started, then smirked. "It's almost like you want me to hold your hand."

"Just start drawing, bitch," Dean grumbled, holding out his arm. Sam took Dean's proffered wrist, pulling forward, fingers light and playful, before he picked up one of the brushes and dipped it into the ink. Glancing at the book in front of him, he started chanting the binding spell, Latin rolling off his tongue like he was born for it, the words hovering in the air with a static hum and raising the hairs on the back Dean's neck. 

The touch of ink was cold at first, an icy sting against the dip of his palm, tracing upwards along a vein, then twisting sharply into thin crooked curls. Hot and instantaneous, the layer of pooled ink thinned, melted into his skin. He sucked in a quick breath as sharp burning heat flushed around the letter and up his arm. Sam's chanting faltered, but Dean shook his head, motioning Sam on with his other hand.

The air grew heavy as Sam traced the next line, bowing into a curve and bumping into the first, his grip loose but steady on Dean's forearm as the brand grew hot and painful.

Dean's breath quickened with Sam's as the air grew heavy between them, too warm and humid; the fog swirled even more, started fanning away from them in ever growing concentric circles. Sam's bangs darkened with sweat against his forehead and his voice sounded deeper, echoing hollowly in the small space.

The power of the spell built with each stroke, air humming in excitement, buzzing against Dean’s ears incessantly. Dean bit his lip, drawing blood and welcoming the distraction as each letter burned brighter and hotter than the last. Sam kept chanting, worry underlining each word, but he couldn't stop now; Dean felt the force of the spell pulling at him, calling for the ritual to be finished. Vowels and consents tumbled from Sam’s lips and Dean’s skin glowed, his vision speckled with white noise and narrowed down to just Sam and ink and the light of his voice.

A final brushstroke, right at the pulse point, connected the chain and suddenly the humming stopped. Dean’s vision snapped back into place and nothing but a heavy clinging silence was left behind. 

Dean breathed in deep, trying to catch his breath. It felt like he'd run a three mile marathon in under four minutes. Sam was faring no better, chest rising and falling heavily. Dean's wrist throbbed briefly, before fading into a dull ache, leaving behind the feeling of something missing, like he was only one half of an incomplete puzzle. 

Enochian letters braceleted his wrist, a deep cloying black, the skin around them tender and reddened with tiny blisters. Then, the red marks began to fade, leaving his skin smooth and undamaged, nothing but vivid black lines remaining. Sam ran one finger across his wrist, sending a shiver down Dean's spine, as each letter tingled beneath his brother's touch.

Dean looked at Sam, their eyes connecting, licked his lips and tasted copper. "Yeah, I'd say that was different."

***

Dean walked.

The road stretched out in front of him, faintly shimmering under the weight of the overripe sun, rippling and fluid from the heat, winding thick as molasses and stretching for miles and miles, cutting through nothing but flat lands and wheat fields. His boots smacked on the pavement, cracked and chipped from wear and tear, long gashes severing it into pieces, the paint faded to nothing, gravel crunching occasionally under foot. the grass and weeds had overtaken the road, claiming territory inch by inch, incessantly marching to war against this last remnant of the time before. 

There wasn't much left from those days, crumbling cars strewn haphazardly from state to state, dilapidated houses broken down to their foundations, smashed telephone poles standing like dead eyed sentinels, feared by most and routinely avoided except by flocking birds looking for a place to rest their wings. Most of the country was dust, dry earthy beds red and rusty, the dirt picked up and scattered by howling winds during the summer months. 

There were demons though. More than he could ever hope to kill or count, snarling around the daylight, waiting for night to fall and take their prey. 

He didn't even remember when it happened, when the world turned from chaos to mostly dead to tiny pockets of humanity trying to stake a claim and just get by, holding out against the darkness by the skin of their teeth and their only hope being simple survival. 

He knew how it all started though. That he'd always remember. 

Dean rubbed his wrist tightly, scratched the back of his neck, and kept walking.

***

They said the man with the yellow eyes started it.

They said it happened instantaneously. 

One minute the world was full to the brim with humans, oblivious dumb humans who didn't know that salt lines were the only way to ward off demons, that to go outside in the daylight was dangerous but to go out at night was suicide. Humans who didn’t know that without chalk lines and blood symbols surrounding a town it'd be decimated in a week.

The next minute, their carefully constructed world was gone. All the giant buildings of silver chrome that shone of pride and indulgence shattered to pieces, fire falling from the sky to make scorched pock marks in the earth, fire bubbling up from beneath in tendrils of smoke and ash, and a wave of _death_ swept over everything. Demons came tumbling in from beyond the veil as the barriers between the worlds shuttered, stalled, and then disintegrated. 

They said half of humanity was killed off in that first wave alone.

They said that it was inevitable, that the world belonged to the demons and humans were just accidents, claiming a world on burrowed time.

After a few decades, they stopped saying anything at all.

***

"All done," she said nervously, having heard stories about the man who sat in front of her, jacket draped under his head, shoulders a study in contrasts. Her work matched up nicely with the one's before, blending perfectly like one continuous marking, years of loops and swirls flowing easily across his skin. His right arm though, it was bare, miles of tan and a splash of freckles, nothing else but a faint trace of scars along his wrist.

Her mother had told her she'd asked him about those scars once, that time he'd visited before, but he hadn't said a word, just handed her a sketch of what he wanted and waited for the prick of the needle.

Her grandmother said she'd gotten the man's name, but she never told a soul what it was. Most time's she thought her grandmother was making it up, since she was also the woman that talked about the time before, like it'd actually existed, like it wasn't more than some trumped up fairy tale to make the children feel better when the demons came knocking on their doors and the salt lines were all they had left.

The man examined her work, carefully, then nodded gruffly in approval. He grabbed his jacket, gave her a few pieces of silver, and left without fanfare, pushing open the door to let in a burst of crisp autumn air. 

She knew she'd never see him again.


End file.
